The Waist Lands

Ruled by Alessa, the Waist Lands are the "wan­der­ing cities" of the no­mads, called so be­cause the tents these peo­ple call homes rarely stay for too long on the same spot, ex­cept a few huge camps called car­a­vanserais.

Trav­el­ing is the main spe­cial­ty of the free­dom-lov­ing no­mads, many of them know not on­ly their own home steppes but pret­ty much the en­tire world. They start trav­el­ing with their par­ents since baby­hood, so at the teen age they can eas­i­ly find a job at trav­el­ing agen­cies across the world to help tourists on their tours.

The Waist Lands were first to in­vent the prac­tice of waist cinch­ing back in the an­cient times when their steppes suf­fered through a dev­as­tat­ing star­va­tion. They had to tug the belts so very tight that even­tu­al­ly peo­ple from oth­er king­doms came to look at these won­drous wasped waists.

The flow of tourists helped to im­prove the econ­o­my and es­tab­lish car­a­van routes, but de­spite the eco­nom­ic growth, the tra­di­tion of tight belt­ing re­mained in the cul­ture and spread to many oth­er king­doms, ig­nit­ing the in­ter­est in waist-cinch­ing as an art form.

The old­est and biggest car­a­vanserai in Hud­ja was turned in­to the Tem­ple of Sagit­tar­ius af­ter the years of Great Star­va­tion. There one can stay for a night and al­ways get to watch the most re­fined Wasp Dance, per­formed by the king­dom's tal­ent­ed youths.

The lands were orig­i­nal­ly in­hab­it­ed by cen­taurs, who learned to live along with the no­mads, and a plen­ty of them can be seen here to­day, even help­ing around car­a­vans and camps.